Thanks for all the replies and suggestions, all are appreciated!!!! I guess I'll have to find some flooring I like and hopefully, be able to get some samples, take them to the house and put them down in different areas of the house and see how they look, esp. against the base of the fireplace. I don't mind the parquet and it may look better once it's cleaned or refinished, but do I think it really looks good, not really. While I think it's okay in the entry, I just don't like how it looks in the area surrounding the base of the bricks. Any suggestions on what may look good against the brick?? Or, should I possibly consider some of the resilient tiles that look like slate in a color that would go with the brick? Would something like that complement?? Maybe a light color tile just in the entry, wood elsewhere? Any other suggestions?

You certainly weren't expecting it to be this way, were you? You and your wife have vastly different parenting standards. Without serious intervention and agreement to specific changes, this isnt going to change. And you would likely confront these issues if you had a biological child of your own with her. My personal opinion is that if she won't address this NOW, with the help of a professional, than you should spare yourself the possible years of grief ahead and get out now. As step parents, we are here to support our spouses. But if their decisions are so fundamentally opposed to ours, how can that be done? The best scenario is to figure this out BEFORE getting married....but that is not always possible. People change, and when we are dating, we don't always see the bigger, longer term picture. You sound desperate, and it is understandable. Please seek professional help asap. You need to manage your own stress. Ask for a referral for you and your wife to seek help together. If she wont go, IT ISNT YOUR FAULT. You need to do something, and you will feel better and begin to think more clearly with an expert helping you. Allowing the children to behave in the way you described is not acceptable. You have reason to be concerned about the future!

Lazygardens, I'm sure you're not far from the truth! I have to admit I have thought many times how much easier this situation could be if he were a widow :-) Mom 2 4, regarding the divorce and length of time it has taken for the legal separation, this can be summed up in one word - finances. In Canada, you must wait one year from the date of separation to file for divorce and many couples, especially with children, considerable assets, and where there are issues of spousal support, go the route of a legal separation agreement to deal with these issues. Once the year has passed, this document can be filed with the application for the divorce and becomes the divorce agreement. These issues can also be brought before a judge, prior to a divorce and orders made with respect to child support, spousal support, the matrimonial home and the division of assets. Instead of taking their issues before a judge, they decided that they could work this out between themselves and their respective lawyers and have an agreement drawn up that would be satisfactory to both. I won't go into all of the issues that turned all of that into a nightmare, but after it became clear they could not work things out between themselves, they tried a mediator, which cost a fair bit of money and got little resolved. At that point, he now sees that he should have pursued the court option but at the time, he was already under a mountain of legal bills. Theirs was a very complicated situation financially that could have dragged on even longer in the courts. In the end, he gave in and walked away with very little. Maybe that was a mistake, and maybe it was fueled in many ways by guilt but it's what he felt he needed to do at the time and a decision he has to live with. The timing for filing for the divorce is purely financial since he will have to absorb the entire cost if he is the one filing. This may sound like a lame excuse but he is just now finishing paying all of the legal bills for the separation agreement. I think you are right in suggesting that in many ways, he has done things to encourage her behaviour. He is in no way the innocent either when it comes to his behaviour toward her and he has come to realize that the hard way. I do believe he has a lot of guilt over the break up of the family but there is no interest on his part in reconciling with her. He really just wants to try to make their relationship better so that his sons don't suffer the consequences any more. I know she will never go away and I have no doubt she will try her best to turns his sons against me. There is nothing I can do about that. I can only hope that they will form their own opinion based on my actions and my character. As for not seeing the big picture, you're wrong. I know more about the big picture than I care to at times. I did a lot of soul searching before I decided to make the step and meet his children. I knew then everything that had gone on and decided I was strong enough to handle it because I think he is worth it. I appreciate your concern and the warnings but I really do want to make this work. I posted on this site because I really need some good advice on how to proceed in slowly building a relationship with his children and some guidance so that I don't make mistakes with them that will later prove fatal. I don't want them to suffer the wrath of their mother, simply because I exist and I honestly don't know what I can do or what he can do to make that situation better. I know from reading many of the posts on this site that there are some very sad situations out there but also some rewarding successes. As a step child myself, I have experienced both and maybe that's where all my hope comes from. It's funny, but I see so much of myself in some of the teenage SD stories. I was the SD from hell for a couple of years! My step mother and father are still married 16 years later and they have a good laugh at my expense sometimes over some of my antics. I really don't know how my step mother hung in there but she did and she loved me and was there for me no matter what a little B**** I was. I have seen many posts where people have hoped that one day their step children will appreciate what they did for them and I can promise you that at least some of them will.

It depends if it's an interior door, or the front door. If an interior door, if you wall it off, it looks like you might obstruct part of the door frame. I don't know if the other posters are talking about walling it off in a "box," or creating an entire fake wall across that wall, which which case you would need to either move the baseboards, or get new baseboards - and those are old baseboards and you may have to have them custom made - even though they are not fancy baseboards. As an alternative you could repair the holes in the floor and ceiling and paint the pipes the same color as the walls. A good drywaller should be able to repair the open ceiling corner. If you wall it off in a box shape, it could have the potential to look cheesy. In my previous house, it was an old house like yours and had the furnace pipe running up from the basement through a corner of the bathroom through the roof. I painted it the same color as the wall and it looked fine. May be difficult to get in the corners behind the pipes, but it's doable.